Dollar

This page is about the dollar currency. For information about the Scottish town of Dollar, see Dollar, Clackmannanshire

The dollar (represented by the dollar sign: "$") is the name of the official currency in several countries, dependencies and other regions. The United States dollar is the world's most widely circulated currency.

History

The name is related to the historic currencies Tolar in Bohemia, Thaler or Taler in Germany, Daalder in the Netherlands and Daler in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The name thaler (from Thal, or nowadays usually Tal, "valley") originally came from the German Guldengroschen ("great gulden", being of silver but equal in value to a gold gulden) coin, minted from the silver from a rich mine at Joachimsthal (St. Joachim's Valley) in Bohemia (then part of the Holy Roman Empire).

The name "Spanish dollar" was used for a Spanish silver coin, the peso, worth eight reals (hence the nickname "pieces of eight"), which was widely circulated during the 18th century in the Spanish colonies in the New World. The use of the Spanish dollar and the Maria Theresa thaler as legal tender for the early United States is the reason for the name of the nation's currency. However, the word dollar was in use in the English language for the thaler for about 200 years before the American Revolution. Spanish dollars were in circulation in the Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and were legal tender in Virginia.

Coins known as dollars were also in use in Scotland during the 17th century, and there is a claim that the use of the English word, and perhaps even the use of the coin, began at the University of St Andrews.

Until decimalisation in 1971 a half crown coin was referred to in some parts of the United Kingdom as half a dollar. This may have stemmed from the fact that the crown (issued latterly only as a commemerative coin) resembled a U.S. silver dollar in size and also in value for a number of years. However, it seems implausible that many British people would ever have seen a U.S. dollar in the days before international travel became common, and the nickname may instead have arisen through some now forgotten song, joke or story.

Synonyms and slang

• The word buck, possibly an abbreviation from buckskin, an intrinsic 'currency' for trade with American Indians known since 1746, has been recorded since 1856 and is widely used as a synonym for the dollars of many countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The latter term, skin, is also used as a synonym as is the possibly related term squaw money.
• Greenback, a nickname originally applied to a 19th-century United States Federal Reserve note, is now a common specific reference to the U.S. dollar (bills of which are now green on both sides); it is not used for coins or dollars of other countries
• incorrect (but see history), is the use of specific other currencies : peso, piaster, shekel, etc.
• other (mostly more general terms for physical money) : ace, banknote, bill, bone, bread, cake, cartwheel, certificate, cheese, cheddar, clam, cucumber, currency, dough, fish, folding money, frog, iron man, legal tender, note, one-spot, single, smacker, smackeroo, year, paper, ends, dead presidents, squid, federal, and benjamins.

Symbol

The dollar sign ($) is a stylization of the heraldic depiction of the Pillars of Hercules (representing the Straits of Gibraltar) on Spanish pieces of eight. The notion that it originated as a crossed "U" and "S", for "United States", and that the bottom of the "U" somehow ceased to appear, is entirely fanciful, as the symbol was in use before the term "United States" was coined.

Related names

• The name of the currency of Samoa, the tala is based on the Samoan pronunciation of the word "dollar". Likewise, the name of the smaller unit, seneiti, equates to "cent".

• In China, the base unit of the official currency Renminbi is called "Yuan" (元 or 圆 , with a symbol ¥). The word "yuan" also means round object, but its original meaning is "dollar". Indigenous coins minted in China were always called "Chin" (錢). The word "Yuan" 圆 referred specifically to the Spanish dollars widely circulated in China in the late 19th century, when they were properly known as 銀圆 (pronounced as "Yin Yuan" ), meaning "silver rounds". Coins minted in Hong Kong in 1866 also carried the same amount of silver as the Spanish dollar and were called "Hong Kong One Dollar" 香港壹圓. When China adopted its first national currency in 1914, the base unit was also called 圆, with the pinyin "Yuan". One meaning of it was still "dollar" , as witness the fact that a "yuan" at that time contained exactly the same amount of silver as a Spanish dollar.

National currencies called "dollar"

• Australian dollar
• Barbados dollar
• Bahamian dollar
• Belize dollar
• Bermuda dollar
• Brunei dollar
• Canadian dollar
• Cayman Islands dollar
• East Caribbean dollar
• Fijian dollar
• Guyanese dollar
• Hong Kong dollar
• Jamaican dollar
• Liberian dollar
• Namibian dollar
• New Zealand dollar
• Singapore dollar
• Solomon Islands dollar
• Suriname dollar
• New Taiwan dollar
• Trinidad and Tobago dollar
• United States dollar
• Zimbabwean dollar (see also Rhodesian dollar)

The name has also been applied to the international dollar, a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power that the U.S. dollar has in the United States at a given point in time.